Andy Hawthorne

You might not want ketchup on your chips after reading this…

Right then. Nineteen eighty-something, this was. I’m working at Sainsbury’s, aren’t I? Stacking shelves. Putting back all the stuff folk had grabbed off ’em during the day.

You’d traipse out the back to the warehouse, grab yourself a trolley piled up with whatever it might be spuds, bog rolls, anything, then wheel the thing out onto the shop floor and get it all up on them shelves quick as you like.

Then you’d go back and get another one. And do it again. And keep on doing it, hour after hour after bloody hour. And you couldn’t just sling it up there any old how neither. You had to dress it. Why a tin of beans needed trousering up, I never did work out.

The Grocery Manager, Maurice, he was called. Five foot two, near enough as wide as he was tall, with a face like a sheep’s arse that someone had taken the clippers to, he comes waddling over and goes: “Yow! Condiments aisle, next. Gerra move on.”

And he jabs his finger at this trolley loaded up with salts and sauces and great jars of beetroot. Heavy as sin, the thing was.

So off I went, good as gold. Keeping one eye on them beetroots the whole way, mind. I didn’t fancy one of them rolling off and turning me and half the shop floor the colour of a plum.

Made it to the pickles section. Got the pickled onions up there careful as you like, and yes, the beetroot and all. No incidents. Stacked the tubs of salt like I was building a little cathedral out of ’em. Lovely job.

Then. The ketchup.

Bottles of the stuff. Glass bottles. This was the Eighties, remember. Nobody gave a monkey’s about recycling back then. The cases — six bottles a go — were stacked two deep on my trolley.

I looked at ’em the way you’d look at a dog you didn’t quite trust. I didn’t fancy them going over neither. Nobody in their right mind wants to be paddling through a lake of sauce.

So I started stacking. Should’ve been simple enough. Get your scalpel out, slice the plastic off, slide the six-pack onto the shelf, next one, job done. Only some clever sod had mis-stacked ’em, hadn’t they.

So I had to lift a six-pack onto my trolley tray, get it ready to go up, and shift what was already on the shelf about a bit to make room.

CRASSHHHHHH!

SPPPPLLLLLAAAAATTTT!!!

The six-pack on my trolley tray made a break for it. Flung itself at the floor like it had somewhere better to be. And the floor caught it a treat. Caught it so well it smashed every last bottle to bits.

Red ketchup went everywhere. Across the floor. Up the shelving. All over my shoes. Started pooling under the trolley like something out of a horror film.

Maurice came barrelling round the corner, hit the sauce at full tilt, and sat himself down a good deal faster than he’d been planning to.

SQUELCH!!!

“AH BLOODY BOLLOCKS!!!”

Which — when you think about it — him sitting there in a spreading puddle of red… well. I’ll let you picture that one for yourselves.

“HOW the FUCK did that HAPPEN?”

“Well, you come running round the corner and—”

“NOT BLOODY ME, YOW DAFT SOD! The fucking sauce!”

“Ah. Right. Well, I had to shift everything about on the shelf and the pack slid off my tray.”

He picked himself up. Stood there dripping. Went stomping off down the aisle leaving a trail of red footprints behind him like some sort of angry, ketchup-soaked hobbit.

“Clean that UP!” 

Now then, I could eat nothing with ketchup on it for months after that. The SMELL. Oh fuck, I can smell it now just thinking about it. It was like somebody had brewed up rotten eggs and gone-off vinegar in a massive vat. And then squatted over it.

Honestly. It has got to be one of the worst smells I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing. Before or since.

Sixty-two mop buckets later, or thereabouts, I got rid of the evidence. Tipping them buckets of sauce-water down the drain out back was a whole other experience I could’ve done without, and all.

A hundred and sixty-two J-Cloths later, I’d got everywhere else sorted. And Nora — one of the women I worked with, lovely woman, built like a prop forward — put the finishing touches on it with about two gallons of air freshener. Sprayed it about like she was crop-dusting.

Ketchup is very nice. In small amounts. Squeezed out of a little sachet onto your burger. I do not recommend wading through it.

Or walking home with your shoes squelching sauce out of the soles with every step. Folk looking at you on the bus like you’ve murdered someone.

I got home and Mum had got tea on. Chips and fish fingers.

“Does anyone want the sauce—”

NO. NOT FOR A LONG TIME.